When the Alpenglow app, using a SunsetWx forecast, predicted a 76% chance for a “Great” sunrise, I packed my photo gear and walked to the Hudson River waterfront, hoping for a fiery Manhattan skyline.
Mother Nature didn’t get the memo. Too many clouds sat on the horizon, dulling the sunrise.
Instead of searching for color in the skies, my attention shifted to the river.
The Hudson was calm. Low wind. No boat traffic. It was early enough on a Saturday that even the commuter ferries hadn’t started running yet. Instead of the usual chop and wakes, the river moved as a smooth, continuous sheet.
Known as Muhheacannituck in the Munsee language, “the waters that are never still,” or more loosely, “the river that flows two ways”… [ny.gov]
The Munsee-speaking Lenape referred to the river as Muhheacannituck which loosely translates as “the river that flows two ways.” The southern portion of the Hudson River is a tidal estuary, flowing north or south, with the freshwater of the river mixing with the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean to create a brackish environment. The river is always moving, but often, the movement is hard to see.
That morning, it wasn’t.
The calm surface revealed the ebb tide, with the Hudson draining briskly but calmly south toward the harbor. In fluid dynamics terms, the river looked laminar, not turbulent — ordered rather than chaotic.
So I decided to go with the flow.
I shifted my composition away from the sky and toward the water, set a 10-second exposure, and let the current pull soft lines through the frame toward the World Trade Center.
A few minutes later, the stillness broke. A large barge sailed past, the surface fractured, and the moment was gone.
It was time to go home.
